Decline in UK energy demand and growth in renewables


A Community Energy Group is investigating whether there is a clear relationship between the decline in the annual electrical energy delivered through the national grid and the increasing energy delivered by FiT registered solar PV installations.  (FiT = Feed-in-Tariff, the government subsidy).
An article by Adam Vaughan in The Guardian dated 30 Jan 2018, notes that the UK electricity demand has fallen by 9% in the past seven years. An analysis of official figures by campaign group Sandbag found the UK fall between 2016 and 2017 was one of the biggest in several years, marking a striking divergence with the rest of Europe, where demand rose. (The UK’s power consumption fell nearly 2% from 355 terawatt hours to 348 TWh, while it rose across the EU as a whole by 0.7% from 3,239 to 3,262 TWh.)
Vaughan suggests that a slowing economy, mild weather and the growing use of energy efficient appliances may be significant factors; he mentions the growth of renewables, but does not give sufficient detail to answer the question of FiT registered solar PV installations.
 (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/30/uk-electricity-use-falling-economy-weather)

The Digest of UK Energy Statistics (DUKES) 2017: main report gives detailed UK energy statistics broadly in agreement with the Guardian report above (e.g. 284.3 TWh final consumption on the public distribution system in 2016) but not the details required on FiT registered solar PV installations.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/digest-of-uk-energy-statistics-dukes-2017-main-report

A Wikipedia entry reports a total installed capacity of 12,318 megawatt (MW) of PV solar power in the UK in May 2017, and UK generation of 3.4% of its total electricity from solar power in 2016, with an all-time peak generation from photovoltaics of 9.04 GW on 26 May 2017.  The report gives a figure of 10,292 GWh from solar systems in 2016, and dividing this by the DUKES figure of 284.313 TWh for2016 gives 3.6%, close to the figure claimed above.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_Kingdom

While the increase in UK solar is significant compared with the decline in electrical energy supplied, does this prove anything? Demand in the rest of Europe rose; should we expect this to correspond to a fall in their solar output?

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